Brief glimpses of a watery sun, before being enveloped in heavy dark skies this campervan morning. It remains chilly with a breeze making it feel a little colder. It is still hat and fleece weather, even though we are close to the start of May. Coffee keeping the hands warm. The sense again of threatening rain in the air. Singing blackbird and the chorus of replies, Robin song and the usual ones that I don’t recognise. No sign of the smattering of starlings. A couple of crows flop across the sky. I love the way they fly, almost lazily and with minimum fuss. There distinctive cry, like the reversing horn of a lorry, replied to in the distance. A solitary magpie dances around the highest branches of the oak in search of food. The ash coming well into leaf, the oak only now in bud. Surrounded by a lush suburban greenness. Moisture now appearing in the air. Closing in on the end of the week, plans for travel nearly complete and only about 10 days to go before the off. Part of me crossing off the days and another part of me struggling to stay in the moment. I have been dancing around the edges of storytelling for some time now. Not in the way of the creation of fiction, though we all live in a world of fiction. The fact that we are all story tellers. Mac McCartney talks of the stories of our ancestors and the importance of rediscovering them and the historic shaping of who we are as a people not just as persons. The historic connections to our own indigenous culture that we have forgotten, or have been wiped out, mislabelled or rejected. We all tell story’s everyday, to each other and to ourselves to make sense of the world that we encounter. The stories a lot of the time not being our own, but those passed down to us, from generation to generation. A lot of them like lead weights on our feet slowing us down, others like the wind at our back, pushing us ever onwards, like the whispers of yesterdays posting. I have found writing opening my curiosity to these story’s and to the world and its stories. An inquisitiveness about people, the self and their journeys. In his book ‘A swim in the pond in the rain’ ( What a title by the way ) George Saunders tells us the writing is not just a technical craft, but also:
“ A way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity.”
The wonderful writer Margaret Atwood wrote :
“ You’re never going to storytelling because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it”.
We each are huge walking and talking tomes of story’s stretching back into time. Making sense of our world, communicating our existence, our understanding, our relationships and friendships through these library’s of story’s. Each being added to each day, some challenged, some discarded as we move ever forward. As I sit and write the world opens up in a unique and different way, every morning is different. New understandings come with new curiosity and with it new story’s are created and old ones as I say fall away. These are my story’s, my uncovering through my writing. Lovely days people.
“ Things worth telling - take time.” Nicholas Denmo.
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